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February 17, 2011

Kimber TCSS - The perfect marriage of Teflon and copper

I've been using Kimber TCSS for years. It's an excellent wire made from low-strand count high-purity copper (as Kimber calls it: Hyper-pure VariStrand™ copper) and the insulating dielectric is high pressure, low temperature extruded Teflon. It's 19 gauge, but the dimensions are small for 19 gauge, so it's easy to work with as interconnect wire, internal hook-up wire, and Kimber even uses multiple strands of the TCSS for it's higher end speaker cables (4TC, 8TC and 12TC). You'll also find it being used in Russ Andrews power supplies and other various cables.

The reason that Kimber TCSS stands out as much as it does is that most of the copper you find with extruded teflon is silver plated. Sometimes a silver plated wire isn't desired for an application, but Teflon, being the pretty much the best dielectric aside from air, is. Teflon, a synthetic fluoropolymer, was developed by DuPont and has a dielectric constant of 2.1. This is slightly better than Polyethylene and notably better than PVC and older materials like Bakelite and Formica. Between the low strand count, high purity copper and the Teflon dielectric, the Kimber wire exhibits a crisp and clear sound.

I've seen some comments on Audio Asylum and the like that the clear and white TCSS variants sound the most clear. Since this has spread around the campfire, Kimber now offers their speaker cables and interconnects using a braid of white and clear. I personally find the clear to be the most attractive, as you can see the copper strands on the inside.

I've made use of Kimber TCSS in a variety of cables, including:

Kimber TCSS and Solid Silver in Teflon Interconnects with Cardas RCAs
Headphone Cables - This one on a Denon Headphone with ViaBlue Connector

Headphone Extension Cables

Phono Ground Cable

TCSS and Solid Silver Mini to Mini Cable
...and another Headphone Cable
Making use of the Kimber wiring as a headphone cable can be a little stiff, but it's generally not too bad on a longer cable. As always, custom cables making use of Kimber TCSS can be requested at Zynsonix.com.



2 comments:

  1. Hi, may i ask you something, why there has 4 cable in mini to mini? Where are they soldered to? Iam a newbie, very interesting to re-cable & upgrade my stuffs since reading your blog. Thank you

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  2. Hi Deskolim, thanks for your comment. You can use two wires for the ground and put the cable in a litz configuration, so two are signal, two are ground. You don't have to though.

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